who is going to look into women's sexuality, reproductive health rights at a serious level? the countdown report was releazed yesterday and shows that 21 kenyan women die daily while giving birht for lack of access to emergence care and shortage of midwives. honestly all women during child delivery need skilled workers around them and access to facilities in case of an emergency. the report shows that many mothers are giving birth at home under the care of birth attendant (skilled and unskilled). for me i thought of all the possible reasons that would make a mother to be decise to deliver at home and the following came to mind; distance to the nearest health facility, lack of good quality health facilities, lack of money to cater for expenses at a maternity, lack of transport to a health facility, lack of the health facility all together, lack of knowledge of the advantages of delivering in a hospital and the list could go on and on.

at the same time, many mothers miss post-natal care, including family planning and immunistions. so that means women would continue to deliver on a yearly bases and thus more complications during pregnancy and child birth. women and children under 5 in kenya still die from preventable or treatable conditions like pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. 

surely, all the tax-payers monies that we pay, nothing can be put in place to prevent this unneccesary deaths? women and children in kenya deserve better than this. as women we need to hold our government accounterable? how much money are they allocating towards construction of maternity wards, equipping of the existing ones and empowering and training birth attendances? what services are being offered at the governmental health centers? things have to change and they need to change for the better.

myra